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At a July 2017 National Security Council meeting, Trump dressed down his generals and other advisers for 25 minutes, complaining that the United States was losing, according to Woodward. “The soldiers on the ground could run things much better than you,” Trump told them. “They could do a much better job. I don’t know what the hell we’re doing.” He went on to ask: “How many more deaths? How many more lost limbs? How much longer are we going to be there?”

The continuing phenomenon of so-called “insider killings,” or “green on blue attacks”—where a member of the Afghan Muslim security forces (military or police), in uniform, turns his weapon on U.S. troops, killing or wounding them—validates Trump’s grave concerns.

When U.S. Army Sergeant Major Timothy Bolyard, on his 7th deployment, was murdered by one of our Afghan “ally” insider killers (and Afghan National Policeman), on Spetember 3, he was the highest-ranking enlisted soldier of the Army’s latest advisory brigade dispatched to Afghanistan. Two months earlier, in July, Corporal Joseph Maciel of Task Force 1st Battalion, another unit under the umbrella command of 1st Security Force Brigade, was similarly killed at the Tarin Kowt Airfield in Afghanistan’s southeast Uruzgan Province. An additional two U.S. service members were wounded during this “insider” attack.

Following the July killing and wounding, Gen. Mark Milley, Army chief of staff, noted that the three soldiers shot were protecting members of the new U.S. advisory brigade that deployed to Afghanistan for the first time just five months beforehand. He stated the Army was moving ahead with plans to create more of the training brigades for deployment, primarily, in Afghanistan. Gen. Milley then added that despite the (July) attack, he would not, “change the mission of the new advisory teams—working closely with their Afghan partners.”

After Sgt Maj Bolyard’s killing less than two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Gen. Mattis concurred, making plain the “advisory” program would continue apace, without questioning either its basic safety for U.S. military personnel, or strategic validity, despite a comprehensive report by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, which determined that “training” Afghan security forces continuously for over a decade had been an abject failure. Mattis averred only that “Afghan leaders” had "increased [the] vetting going on... they are bringing in more people that we have helped train to know how to do it, to make certain we're catching people who have been radicalized."

Mattis’ comments about “increased vetting” by Afghan leadership to detect “radicalization,” and subsequent remarks at a Pentagon 9/11 remembrance ceremony characterizing the mass murderous jihad terror attacks as “hatred disguised in false religious grab,” are depressingly consistent with his development and evangelistic application of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine. COIN, as adapted by Mattis in 2006 to Muslim battlegrounds, rivets upon his thoroughly bowdlerized view of mainstream, sharia-based Islam, and the creed’s central institution of jihad warfare. John Dickerson’s 2010 hagiography of General Mattis describes the key feature of the COIN manual—“a new concept of risk: troops use less force and accept more short-term vulnerability to build ties with locals that will bring longer-term security”—and how Mattis conceived and acted upon this overarching directive. Mattis “called in experts in Arab culture to lead cultural sensitivity classes." He also: